"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Fox hosts anti-immigrant leader to launch baseless attacks on DREAM ActFox & Friends hosted William Gheen, president of the anti-immigrant Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), to attack the DREAM Act. Gheen not only rehashed falsehoods about the bill, but also levied several absurd claims, such as that the bill would "displace and replace" millions of American citizens and that its passage would mean that Americans can "kiss the borders of the United States goodbye." Gheen and ALIPAC have a long history of extreme nativist rhetoric and have been linked to white supremacist groups. Read More

CNN's Anderson Cooper took Texas birther and state Rep. Leo Berman (R) down a whole bunch of pegs last night over Berman's birther bill. "You're basing legislation on stuff that's just rumors and stuff that's been proven to be false," Cooper told him.

Earlier this month, Berman introduced a bill in the Texas House that would "require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state," because, as Berman put it, "we have a president whom the American people don't know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place."

Berman, who has also called President Obama "God's punishment on us today," went on AC360 to talk about his bill, but ended up fumbling through his notes when Cooper hit him with, you know, facts.

One representative exchange came after Berman asked why no one has access to any of the President's school records. "Why don't we know anything about a president who has such a radical agenda?" he said.

Cooper asked him: "Have you seen George W. Bush's transcripts from college?"

Berman, unable to respond to this, soon moved on: "Where are the president's passports and his travel records that got him to Pakistan in the early 90s, when no U.S. citizen could get to Pakistan at all?"

Cooper replied: "What you just said is factually incorrect," adding that Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 when Americans could still go there. "That's just an internet rumor that you're spreading," Cooper said.

Here's the full segment. It's about 12 minutes, but well worth watching for those who love a good birther smack down:

Say what you want about WikiLeaks - and I don't much like what it has done - it nevertheless would be useful for its founder, Julian Assange, to follow George W. Bush as he lopes around the country, promoting his new book, "Decision Points." When, for instance, Bush attempts to justify the Iraq war by saying the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, Assange could reach into his bag of leaked U.S. government cables and cite Saudi King Abdullah's private observation that the war had given Iraq to Iran as a "gift on a golden platter."

Iraq now has a Shiite-dominated government, and many senior officials who are ominously friendly with Iran. It was always American policy to use Saddam's Iraq to counterbalance Iran, since it was really Iran that posed a danger to the region. That danger is now amply documented in the new WikiLeaks documents - including the revelation that North Korea has sold Iran missiles capable of reaching, say, Tel Aviv or, a minute or so later, Cairo.

To a certain extent the leaked documents contain the rawest form of gossip. It is amusing to learn that Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy will not travel without his Ukrainian nurse, described as a "voluptuous blond." It is fun to wonder, in a Scrooge McDuck moment, how Afghanistan's vice president was able to take $52 million in cash out of the country and get it through customs in the United Arab Emirates last year when you and I get stopped for having a small tube of shampoo. Something wrong here, I suspect.

The Arab world's alarm at the imminence of an Iranian bomb is on full display in the leaked documents - as is the Obama administration's methodical and effective attempts to isolate Tehran. Saudi Arabia's Abdullah implored Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time. The (Sunni) Arab world loathes and fears Iran on sectarian grounds and also because it espouses a revolutionary doctrine.

This is the world George Bush left us. It exists everywhere but in his book, where facts are either omitted or rearranged so that the war in Iraq seems the product of pure reason. As my colleague, the indefatigably indefatigable Walter Pincus, has pointed out, Bush manages to bollix up both the chronology and the importance of the various inspections of Iraq's weapons systems so as to suggest that any other President given the same set of facts would have gone to war. "I had tried to address the threat from Saddam Hussein without war," he writes. On that score, he is simply not credible..........................

Monday, November 29, 2010

Fox still repeatedly pushing small business tax lie On November 29, Fox & Friends repeatedly suggested that most small businesses will be affected by the extension of the Bush tax cuts, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of small business would be unaffected by the expiration of the tax cuts for the rich. Read More

EXCLUSIVE: Fox runs with another bogus War on Christmas story?Fox & Friends reported that a school in central Florida had banned the "traditional Christmas colors" red and green from classrooms. In a statement to Media Matters, the school's district spokesperson, Regina Klares, has denied this, stating, "There is not a ban on the colors red and green at Heathrow Elementary." Read More

Unbalanced: Fox News' conspiracy theory obsession Fox News and its employees have played a role in hosting, promoting and repeating conspiracy theories -- including claims that President Obama isn't a U.S. citizen, 9-11 conspiracy theories, suggestions that Obama is a Muslim, and conspiracies involving the Gulf oil spill. Read More

Fox panelist's outrageous claim: TSA agents can make $175,000 "to pat people down" Fox News panelist Gary B. Smith claimed that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents "can make up to $175,000 a year" "to pat people down." In reality, TSA personnel primarily responsible for screening passengers make between $25,518 and $44,007 plus locality pay, and even senior managers supervising TSA activities at entire airports earn up to the capped maximum of $172,550, including any pay received based on locality. Read More

Beck just makes things up about health care reform Glenn Beck falsely claimed that "the tactic known as deem and pass" was used for "final passage" of health care reform legislation. In fact, House Democrats did not use "deem and pass" to pass the bill, which Fox News itself reported in March. Read More

WASHINGTON — A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.

Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday.

The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. On Saturday, the State Department’s legal adviser, Harold Hongju Koh, wrote to a lawyer for WikiLeaks informing the organization that the distribution of the cables was illegal and could endanger lives, disrupt military and counterterrorism operations and undermine international cooperation against nuclear proliferation and other threats.

The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:

¶ A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

¶ Gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.

¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

¶ Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan’s vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money “a significant amount” that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.” (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)

¶ A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.

¶ Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the “worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar’s security service was “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,” the cable said.

¶ An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including “lavish gifts,” lucrative energy contracts and a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi “appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin” in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoys supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he is undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.

¶ Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States’ failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send “new” arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group. ¶ Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”

The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked “top secret,” the government’s most secure communications status. But some 11,000 are classified “secret,” 9,000 are labeled “noforn,” shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government, and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.

Many more cables name diplomats’ confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: “Please protect” or “Strictly protect.”

The Times has withheld from articles and removed from documents it is posting online the names of some people who spoke privately to diplomats and might be at risk if they were publicly identified. The Times is also withholding some passages or entire cables whose disclosure could compromise American intelligence efforts.

Terrorism’s Shadow

The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States’ relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.

They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.

Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.

For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable’s fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is nonetheless breathtaking.

“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen’s deputy prime minister to “joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.

Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, “provided it’s good whiskey.”

Likewise, press reports detailed the unhappiness of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or to visit ground zero during a United Nations session last year.

But the cables add to the tale a touch of scandal and alarm. They describe the volatile Libyan leader as rarely without the companionship of “his senior Ukrainian nurse,” described as “a voluptuous blonde.” They reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. The American ambassador to Libya told Colonel Qaddafi’s son “that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique,” a cable reported to Washington.

The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.

Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”

The American ambassador to Eritrea reported last year that “Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying” in denying that they were supporting the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia. The cable then mused about which seemed more likely.

As he left Zimbabwe in 2007 after three years as ambassador, Christopher W. Dell wrote a sardonic account of Robert Mugabe, that country’s aging and erratic leader. The cable called Mr. Mugabe “a brilliant tactician” but mocked “his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics).”

The possibility that a large number of diplomatic cables might become public has been discussed in government and media circles since May. That was when, in an online chat, an Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, described having downloaded from a military computer system many classified documents, including “260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world.” In an online discussion with Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, Private Manning said he had delivered the cables and other documents to WikiLeaks.

Mr. Lamo reported Private Manning’s disclosures to federal authorities, and Private Manning was arrested. He has been charged with illegally leaking classified information and faces a possible court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison term.

In July and October, The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel published articles based on documents about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those collections of dispatches were placed online by WikiLeaks, with selective redactions of the Afghan documents and much heavier redactions of the Iraq reports. The group has said it intends to post the documents in the current trove as well, after editing to remove the names of confidential sources and other details.

Fodder for Historians

Traditionally, most diplomatic cables remain secret for decades, providing fodder for historians only when the participants are long retired or dead. The State Department’s unclassified history series, entitled “Foreign Relations of the United States,” has reached only the year 1972.

While an overwhelming majority of the quarter-million cables provided to The Times are from the post-9/11 era, several hundred date from 1966 to the 1990s. Some show diplomats struggling to make sense of major events whose future course they could not guess.

In a 1979 cable to Washington, Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat in Teheran, mused with a knowing tone about the Iranian revolution that had just occurred: “Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism,” Mr. Laingen wrote, offering tips on exploiting this psyche in negotiations with the new government. Less than three months later, Mr. Laingen and his colleagues would be taken hostage by radical Iranian students, hurling the Carter administration into crisis and, perhaps, demonstrating the hazards of diplomatic hubris.

In 1989, an American diplomat in Panama City mulled over the options open to Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, who was facing narcotics charges in the United States and intense domestic and international political pressure to step down. The cable called General Noriega “a master of survival”; its author appeared to have no inkling that one week later, the United States would invade Panama to unseat General Noriega and arrest him.

In 1990, an American diplomat sent an excited dispatch from Cape Town: he had just learned from a lawyer for Nelson Mandela that Mr. Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment was to end. The cable conveys the momentous changes about to begin for South Africa, even as it discusses preparations for an impending visit from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

The voluminous traffic of more recent years — well over half of the quarter-million cables date from 2007 or later — show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world.

In an era of satellites and fiber-optic links, the diplomatic cable retains the archaic name of an earlier technological era. It has long been the tool for the secretary of state to dispatch orders to the field and for ambassadors and political officers to send their analyses back to Washington.

The cables come with their own lexicon: “codel,” for a visiting Congressional delegation; “visas viper,” for a report on a person considered dangerous; “démarche,” an official message to a foreign government, often a protest or warning.

Diplomatic Drama

But the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats’ narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.

Among the most fascinating examples recount American officials’ meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan president and a power broker in the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar.

They describe Mr. Karzai, “dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez,” the traditional dress of loose tunic and trousers, appearing “nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar,” and trying to win over the Americans with nostalgic tales about his years running a Chicago restaurant near Wrigley Field.

But in midnarrative there is a stark alert for anyone reading the cable in Washington: “Note: While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker.” (Mr. Karzai has repeatedly denied such charges.) And the cables note statements by Mr. Karzai that the Americans, informed by a steady flow of eavesdropping and agents’ reports, believe to be false.

A cable written after the February meeting coolly took note of the deceit on both sides.

Mr. Karzai “demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs,” the cable said. “He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities. We will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a recurring, transparent message to him” about the limits of American tolerance.

Not all Business

Even in places far from war zones and international crises, where the stakes for the United States are not as high, curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government’s understanding of exotic places.

In a 2006 account, a wide-eyed American diplomat describes the lavish wedding of a well-connected couple in Dagestan, in Russia’s Caucasus, where one guest is the strongman who runs the war-ravaged Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The diplomat tells of drunken guests throwing $100 bills at child dancers, and nighttime water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea.

“The dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones,” the diplomat wrote. The host later tells him that Ramzan Kadyrov “had brought the happy couple ‘a five-kilo lump of gold’ as his wedding present.”

“After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya,” the diplomat reported to Washington. “We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, ‘Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.’ ”

Scott Shane reported from Washington, and Andrew W. Lehren from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jo Becker, C. J. Chivers and James Glanz from New York; Eric Lichtblau, Michael R. Gordon, David E. Sanger, Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson from Washington; and Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Fox News' opinion website Fox Nation and their readers don't seem to know satire when they see it.

The Fox News sister site re-posted a joke from the satirical website The Onion Friday about President Barack Obama sending a 75,000-word e-mail to the the entire nation. At no point does Fox Nation note that the story is a satire.

The Onion story joked that Obama had "reached the end of [his] rope" and sent out the "rambling" stream of consciousness e-mail that addressed everything from the war in Afghanistan to his live-in mother-in-law.

The story goes on to say that the fake Obama e-mail was 27 megabytes and 127 printed pages.

If Fox Nation knows the story is a joke, they aren't letting on, and many of the comments on the post treat the story as if it were actual news.......................................

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

HOLLYWOOD – The Dailai Lama has given up being leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile and has moved into the Playboy Mansion.

The aging Tibetan leader has given up his ceremonial role as leader of Tibetan government-in-exile and decided to spend the rest of his life with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

Hugh Hefner has named the Dalai Lama the new Leader of Playboy, which the spiritual leader has embraced. The Dalai Lama will remain the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the focal point of Tibetan national aspirations, said spokesman Yeha Boloorma.

As head of the dominate Gelug branch of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama was the top religious leader for Tibet . Many of his predecessors also served as Tibet’s political ruler, and the Dalai Lama himself served as head of government there after Chinese troops marched into his Himalayan homeland in 1950.

Playboy was formed in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, who has been in “sexile” as well ever since. The Dalia Lama will not have to change his wardrobe. “We like to be comfortable around the Mansion and the Dalai Lama will fit right in,” said Hef.

Many of the “Hef Girls” are happy to have the Dalai Lama move in. “He’s a little younger than Hef, and a lot cuter,” said Dolly Hart. “There’s something so special about him,” said Paige Peters. “I get a good vibe being around him and well… let’s just say it’s a very spiritual experience being with him.” Beijing has always claimed Tibet has forever been part of its territory, but many Tibetans say the region was virtually independent for centuries. But now, the Chinese are now willing to talk to the Dalai Lama and are sending a large delegation of leaders to the Playboy Mansion to talk to him.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Fox News hosts tell Buffett to "quit lecturing" the rich Fox News figures seized on Warren Buffett's comment that "people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes" to attack him and other millionaires who support ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. Fox has repeatedly defended the tax cuts for the wealthy and has accused Democrats of engaging in "class warfare" for wanting to return the top two income tax rates to 2000 levels. Read More

Beck tells audience to ruin Thanksgiving dinner with misinformation about inflation While advising his Fox News viewers to talk about inflation at their Thanksgiving dinners, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that the government removed food and energy prices from its measure of inflation to hide rising prices, that a survey showed economists are "worried" about inflation, and that Social Security recipients are not receiving a cost-of-living adjustment because the government "changed the calculation." Read More

This is a transcription of this speech made for the convenience of readers and researchers. The texts for this famous speech available in the files of the John F. Kennedy Pre-Presidential Papers here at the John F. Kennedy Library are partial and diverge widely from the speech as it is commonly known. We have therefore opted to feature the text as it was published in the volume of presidential campaign speeches that was ordered to be printed by Congress after the 1960 election.

Dr. Niebuhr, Professor Hayes, Governor Stevenson, Mr. Meany, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I accept your nomination, and I am proud of it. [Applause.] I am proud to be the only candidate in 1960 with the nomination of two political parties, although I'm not certain how many tickets are now headed in how many States by Senator Goldwater. [Laughter.]

We had an interesting convention at Los Angeles, and we ended with a strong Democratic platform which we called the rights of man. The Republican platform has also been presented. I do not know its title, but it has been referred to as the power of positive thinking. [Laughter and applause.] I do not regard the title of liberal as an honorary degree; I regard it as a license to preach the gospel of liberalism across this country. [Applause.] But I think you know why this title could be conferred on my candidacy. Just before you met, a weekly news magazine with wide circulation, featured a section entitled, "Kennedy's Liberal Promises," and described me, and I quote, "as the farthest-out liberal Democrat around," unquote. While I am not certain of the "beatnik" definition of "farthest-out," I am certain that this was not intended as a compliment. [Laughter.] And last week, as further proof of my credentials, a noted American clergyman was quoted as saying that our society may survive in the event of my election, but it certainly won't be what it was. I would like to think he was complimenting me, but I'm not sure he was. [Laughter and applause.] But a more serious challenge to my credentials, this time as a Democrat, was issued in Dallas, Tex. In his address to a large gathering of Texas Republicans, and there are no purer breed anyplace in the United States [laughter], Mr. Nixon complained that what he called the party of Schlesinger, Galbraith, and Bowles was not the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson. I do not agree, but I have no intention of issuing a similar challenge to my opponent's credentials; for I know full well that the party of Nixon, Dirksen, and Goldwater is the party of Hoover, Harding, Coolidge, McKinley, and the rest. [Applause.]

The final proof is the old political adage that you can tell a friend by the enemies that he makes; and by this standard, you and I are the closest of friends. For Mr. Nixon and Mr. Dirksen and Mr. Mundt and Mr. Goldwater don't like my liberal policies, I'm glad to say, any more than they do yours. They are fighting a rear guard action against the 20th century, and they fear that our time is coming and theirs is going. I do not mean to say that the fight is wholly between the Democratic and the Republican Parties. Those of you who are here tonight are proof of the fact that some of the best friends that the Democrats have are not in the Democratic Party. [Applause.] I think in November that some of them may be in the Republican Party, but I hold out no hope at all for the vast and impressive number of Republicans who suddenly, just before election time - those who are running for office - suddenly begin to sound like true Lincolns.

Eight years ago on this occasion, Adlai Stevenson called this quadrennial outburst of affection "that pause in the real Republican occupation known as the 'Liberal Hour.'" And he added, "It should never be confused," and he was right, "with any period when Congress is in session." [Laughter and applause.]

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal." [Applause.]

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, "Liberal," to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my views - I hope for all time - 2 nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take this opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a super state. I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale Federal bureaucracies in this administration, as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons, that liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility. [Applause.]

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit [applause] and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961 [applause].

Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, who were driven by longing for education for their children and for their children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.

Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle [applause] and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our own day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than good will missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.

In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."

And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. [Applause.] Our opponents would like the people to believe that in the time of danger it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue 4 more years of stagnation and indifference at home and abroad, of starving the underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.

This is an important election. This is an important election - in many ways as important as any in this century - and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort.

The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, of expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope. [Applause.]

I think it is our task to recreate that same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.

Some pundits are saying that it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. [Applause.] I say it is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960's. Thank you.

Senate Republicans are dragging their feet on the ratification of the START nuclear treaty with Russia, according to a chorus of Democrats and newspaper editorial boards who urge its immediate ratification.

But Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hesitated putting his finger in the partisan political soup.

"You would have to ask the Senate," Admiral Mullen, told ABC’s This Week anchor Christiane Amanpour, sidestepping on whether Republicans are playing politics with national security.

"What I think is – there is a sense of urgency with respect to ratifying this treaty that needs to be recognized. Historically this has been bipartisan. This is a national security issue of great significance and the sooner we get it done the better," he said.

Adm. Mullen stressed that START must be ratified in spite of this 'lame duck' session..........................

Right-wing media at odds with military leaders over START The right-wing media have been attacking President Obama's New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), claiming it "may harm national security." But the treaty enjoys widespread support among military leaders, who have called its passage a "no-brainer," and have argued that "the treaty makes us safer." Read More

Beck's upcoming "It's a Wonderful Life" stunt being promoted with lies Promoting an upcoming special that he claims will highlight a town in Ohio that is "fighting to be Bedford Falls," Glenn Beck falsely claimed that officials in that city have not received "any money from the government." In fact, the city and surrounding county have received more than $6 million dollars from the 2009 stimulus bill. Read More

Will right wing accuse pope of advocating "what Hitler did" on healthcare? Pope Benedict XVI's declaration that "health justice should be among the priorities of governments and international institutions" places the pontiff firmly in opposition to many right-wing media figures who have compared state health care to "fascists of the 20's and 30's," "raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor," and to "what Hitler did." Read More

Somehow I doubt this will lead to a flood of subpoenas: a 2006 climate change denial report commissioned by the then-GOP controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee turns out to have been largely plagiarized from various textbooks and Wikipedia.

Important political magazine Life & Style (is this that Tina Brown/Newsweek thing?) just sent us a very important news update on Willow Palin, the hot teen sensation of Discovery Channel’s new travel video, White Trash On Drugz. According to unimpeachable sources (other white trash kids in Wasilla), Willow is such a piece of trash.

Plus she is so dumb, she buys marijuana in Alaska, where it is free and grows everywhere — except anywhere around a Palin, as the only food that doesn’t wilt in the presence of a Palin woman is something assembled by Taco Bell. Let’s learn all about parking lot life in Wasilla, at 1 a.m., with your favorite “first family,” the Palins! READ MORE »

You said, “Folks, of all the cars, no offense, General Motors, please, but of all the cars in the world, the Chevrolet Volt is the Car of the Year? Motor Trend magazine, that’s the end of them. How in the world do they have any credibility? Not one has been sold. The Volt is the Car of the Year.”

So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since … I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person?

Last time you ranted about the Volt, you got confused about the “range,” and said on the air that the car could be driven no more than 40 miles at a time, period. At least you stayed away from that issue this time, but you continue to attack it as the car only a tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors customer would want. As radio loudmouths like you would note, none of those potential customers were to be found after November 2.

Back to us for a moment, our credibility, Mr. Limbaugh, comes from actually driving and testing the car, and understanding its advanced technology. It comes from driving and testing virtually every new car sold, and from doing this once a year with all the all-new or significantly improved models all at the same time. We test, make judgments and write about things we understand.

Chevrolet has not sold one Volt because it’s not on sale yet. It will not sell 10,000 this first model year (although GE plans to buy truckloads for its fleet), because it takes time to ramp up production. See, Rush, because we’re the World’s Automotive Authority, we get access to many cars before they go on sale.........................

Sunday, November 21, 2010

For all the Republicans' bluster during the Bush administration about national security-hating "Defeatocrats," it seems the cards have finally turned.

President Obama has in recent days demanded that Congress ratify the START nuclear treaty with Russia, which would enhance America's commitment to nonproliferation and strengthen ties with former nuclear arch-rival.

"Without ratification this year, the United States will have no inspectors on the ground, and no ability to verify Russian nuclear activities," Obama said in his weekly radio address.

"Without ratification, we put at risk the coalition that we have built to put pressure on Iran, and the transit route through Russia that we use to equip our troops in Afghanistan," he continued.

But Republicans seem content with delaying the process, if not stopping it outright.

"These broader ramifications of ratification go across the world," explained Edward Luce, reporter for The Financial Times, during a recent appearance on ABC's This Week.

"Russia's cooperation is something Obama has worked on very successfully, very patiently... for two years now and this puts that in jeopardy."

He added that Republicans, set about their agenda to make Obama a one-term president, may ultimately go about it unintelligently.

"Pick two countries that would like to see a failure of ratification: it would be North Korea and Iran," Luce continued. "I think if that argument doesn't work with the Republicans, that sort of basic, elemental national security argument doesn't work, nothing is. There is a greater hatred of Obama than there is a love of American national security."

The treaty -- signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama at an elaborate ceremony in Prague in April -- restricts each nation to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads, a cut of about 30 percent from a limit set in 2002.

The agreement, a top Obama foreign policy initiative, replaces a previous accord that lapsed in December 2009 and also requires ratification by Russia's lower house, the Duma.

Some Republicans have confessed that they want to stall its passage to embarrass President Obama.

"The choice is clear: a failure to ratify New START would be a dangerous gamble with America's national security, setting back our understanding of Russia's nuclear weapons, as well as our leadership in the world," Obama said. "That is not what the American people sent us to Washington to do.".....................

A former foreign policy chief for the largest Israeli lobby in the US is threatening to provide evidence members of the organization regularly traffic in classified US government information.

The claim comes in the midst of an increasingly ugly lawsuit in which parties have alleged or admitted to mass viewing of pornography among senior staffers at AIPAC as well as extra-marital affairs.

Steve Rosen, who was in charge of foreign policy issues at AIPAC until 2005, is suing his former employer for $20 million, alleging that AIPAC defamed him when they fired him. Rosen and colleague Keith Weissman were charged in 2004 with espionage for allegedly pressuring a Washington Post reporter into running classified US government information they had obtained about Iran. The charges were dropped last year, evidently due to lack of evidence..............................

Ah, Thanksgiving. A celebration regardless of creed; a time for all Americans to come together after a divisive election year.

But why take a holiday from argument? In these fractious times, even the meaning of Thanksgiving is subject to political debate.

Forget what you learned about the first Thanksgiving being a celebration of a bountiful harvest, or an expression of gratitude to the Indians who helped the Pilgrims through those harsh first months in an unfamiliar land. In the Tea Party view of the holiday, the first settlers were actually early socialists. They realized the error of their collectivist ways and embraced capitalism, producing a bumper year, upon which they decided that it was only right to celebrate the glory of the free market and private property.

Historians quibble with this interpretation. But the story, related by libertarians and conservatives for years, has taken on new life over the last year among Tea Party audiences, who revere early American history, and hunger for any argument against what they believe is the big-government takeover of the United States.

It has made Thanksgiving another proxy in the debate over health care and entitlement spending, and placed it alongside the New Deal and the Constitution on the platter of historical items picked apart by competing narratives.

There are other debates about Thanksgiving — whether the first was in Jamestown, Va., or Plymouth, Mass.; whether it was intended as a religious holiday or not. But broadly, the version passed on to generations of American schoolchildren holds that the settlers who had arrived in the New World on the Mayflower in 1620 were celebrating the next year’s good harvest, sharing in the bounty with Squanto and their other Indian friends, who had taught them how to hunt and farm on new terrain.

All very kumbaya, say Tea Party historians, but missing the economics lesson within.

In one common telling, the pilgrims who came to Plymouth established a communal system, where all had to pool whatever they hunted or grew on their lands. Because they could not reap the fruits of their labors, no one had any incentive to work, and the system failed — confusion, thievery and famine ensued.

Finally, the governor of the colony, William Bradford, abolished this system and gave each household a parcel of land. With private property to call their own, the Pilgrims were suddenly very industrious and found themselves with more corn than they knew what to do with. So they invited the Indians over to celebrate. (In some other versions, the first Thanksgiving is not a feast but a brief respite from famine. But the moral is always the same: socialism doesn’t work.) The same commune-to-capitalism, famine-to-feast story is told of Jamestown, the first English settlement, in 1607. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader and Texas congressman who has become a Tea Party promoter, related it as a cautionary tale in a speech to the National Press Club earlier this year.

The version is also taught in a one-day course called “The Making of America,” which became popular with Tea Party groups across the country after Glenn Beck recommended the work of its author, W. Cleon Skousen, who died in 2006. Tea Party blogs have reposted “The Great Thanksgiving Hoax” from a Web site celebrating the work of the libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, a favorite of Ron Paul devotees. The post concludes: “Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.”

Leave aside the question of whether this country is on the march to socialism (conservatives say yes, and blame the Democrats). What does the record say?

Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common — William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the “common course.” But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.

“It was directed ultimately to private profit,” said Richard Pickering, a historian of early America and the deputy director of Plimoth Plantation, a museum devoted to keeping the Pilgrims’ story alive.

The arrangement did not produce famine. If it had, Bradford would not have declared the three days of sport and feasting in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving. “The celebration would never have happened if the harvest was going to be less than enough to get them by,” Mr. Pickering said. “They would have saved it and rationed it to get by.”

The competing versions of the story note Bradford’s writings about “confusion and discontent” and accusations of “laziness” among the colonists. But Mr. Pickering said this grumbling had more to do with the fact that the Plymouth colony was bringing together settlers from all over England, at a time when most people never moved more than 10 miles from home. They spoke different dialects and had different methods of farming, and looked upon each other with great wariness.

“One man’s laziness is another man’s industry, based on the agricultural methods they’ve learned as young people,” he said.

Bradford did get rid of the common course — but it was in 1623, after the first Thanksgiving, and not because the system wasn’t working. The Pilgrims just didn’t like it. In the accounts of colonists, Mr. Pickering said, “there was griping and groaning.”

“Bachelors didn’t want to feed the wives of married men, and women don’t want to do the laundry of the bachelors,” he said.

The real reason agriculture became more profitable over the years, Mr. Pickering said, is that the Pilgrims were getting better at farming crops like corn that had been unknown to them in England.

As for Jamestown, there was famine. But historians dispute the characterization of the colony as a collectivist society. “To call it socialism is wildly inaccurate,” said Karen Ordahl Kupperman, a historian at New York University and the author of “The Jamestown Project.” “It was a contracted company, and everybody worked for the company. I mean, is Halliburton a socialist scheme?”

The widespread deaths resulted mostly from malaria. Tree ring studies suggest that the settlement was also plagued by drought.

But the biggest problem, Professor Kupperman said, was the lack of planning. The Virginia settlers came to the New World thinking that they could find gold or a route to the Pacific Ocean via the Chesapeake Bay, and make a quick buck by setting up a trading station like others were establishing in the East Indies.

“It was just wishful thinking,” she said, “a failure to recognize that these things are really, really difficult.”

The Tea Party’s take on Thanksgiving may have its roots in the cold war.

But it is important to note that he was writing in 1952, amid great American suspicion of the Soviets. “The challenges of the cold war and dealing with Russia are reflected in the text,” Mr. Pickering said.

Likewise, Cleon Skousen, the author of the “Making of America” textbook, was an anticommunist crusader in the 1960s. (His term for Jamestown was not socialism but “secular communism.”)

“What’s going on today is a tradition of conservative thought about that early community structure,” Mr. Pickering said.

William Hogeland, the author of “Inventing American History,” agreed. “Across the political spectrum, there’s a tendency to grab a hold of some historical incident and yoke it to a current agenda,” he said. “It doesn’t always mean there’s no connection, but often things are presented as historical first, rather than as part of the agenda first.”

And indeed, many can play this game.

Professor Kupperman, for instance, said the Jamestown story reminded her mostly of the Iraq war.

“It was kind of like the idea that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers,” she said.